Tuesday, February 10, 2004

It's like the other catchphrases in his stump speech: "We band of brothers," he says, indicating his fellow veterans. "We're a little older, we're a little greyer, but we still know how to fight for this country."

Hmmm, it used to be the band of baby rapers.

The only relevant lesson from Vietnam is this: then, as now, it was not possible for the enemy to achieve military victory over the US; their only hope was that America would, in effect, defeat itself. And few men can claim as large a role in the loss of national will that led to that defeat as John Kerry. A brave man in Vietnam, he returned home to appear before Congress and not merely denounce the war but damn his "band of brothers" as a gang of rapists, torturers and murderers led by officers happy to license them to commit war crimes with impunity. He spent the Seventies playing Jane Fonda and he now wants to run as John Wayne.